In the food processing industry as an example, various devices and processes have been developed for preparing coated food products. For example, in large-scale food processing environments, the food products may be battered and breaded using in-line processing equipment. The food products are introduced to a batter applicator machine and dipped or otherwise coated with a batter having a desired formulation and consistency. Thereafter, the food products may be breaded, fried or otherwise processed as desired. The batter applicator is supplied with an amount of batter material from a mixing machine to as to allow for continuous processing of food products passing therethrough. Although batter mixing apparatus have been developed for this purpose, the existing apparatus do not allow effective control over batter viscosity and temperatures to provide a consistent and repeatable batter material. It would therefore be desirable to provide a system and methods for producing batter having predetermined characteristics and attributes, to allow proper coating and preparation of food products in an in-line processing system.
Batter mixing equipment previously developed also operated in an isolated fashion, with an operator controlling the functions of the mixing machine and therefore the quality of batter produced thereby. It would therefore be desirable to provide a system and methods to allow operation of a batter mixing machine in a manner such that the machine is integrated into an overall processing system, and to allow centralized control and monitoring of machine function.
In prior batter mixing systems, an amount of a dry mix material is combined with water to form a desired batter. The amount of dry mix formulation and water or other ingredients must be accurately mixed and maintained at a desired temperature to provide a batter having predetermined characteristics to provide desired coating of food products. Depending on the food products, the batch of dry mix material, the local environment and other factors, the predetermined characteristics can vary. The system must accurately and continuously mix the ingredients to form the desired batter, or the final product will vary in appearance, weight and taste. In prior systems therefore, the operator was required to be relatively skilled to monitor the operation to ensure proper mixing. If problems in the batter occur, it is typically only when the battered food products have been further processed, and the final product is not in compliance with predetermined quality control standards. It would therefore be desirable to allow selective control of the batter mixing system based on direct feedback from further processing steps or independent of an operator.
In this regard, prior systems have required manual monitoring of the consistency of the batter produced to attempt to maintain the desired batter characteristics. Instruments or methods for relative the viscosity of a product have been developed. Depending on the nature of the product and the viscosity, such methods vary. In the environment of large scale food processing, the batter consistency is generally of intermediate viscosity and monitoring is typically performed by the Zahn cup method. In this method, a relative viscosity is measured by the number of seconds it takes for a measured amount of product to flow out of a Zahn cup, which is a container with a hole in the bottom. Zahn cups are graded by the size of the hole. In such a technique, the measurement is somewhat subjective, and depending on the user, wide variations in readings are possible for the same batter mix. The Zahn cup measurement technique simply does not provide a reliable and repeatable measure of viscosity. Further, such a technique only provides a relative viscosity and does not provide any precise control parameter for the batter mixing operation. Other viscosity measuring techniques have been developed for fluids, depending on the nature of the fluid.
Additionally, with respect to a batter material for use in a large scale food processing environment, the above mentioned method of utilizing a Zahn cup to provide a relative measure of viscosity, is typically used when a batter is initially mixed. It is known that when a batter is first mixed, it exhibits different characteristics than most liquids. This is due to the mixture behaving more like a suspension of solids, rather than a true liquid. An operator who works a batter mixer typically has to test the viscosity of the batter at certain time intervals in order to know when the batter has become a homogeneous product. This process is time consuming and can result in a batter with a varying viscosity, particularly if different operators read the Zahn cup measurements differently.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a batter mixing system with the ability to accurately measure the actual viscosity of the batter or other material. More specifically, it would be desirable to provide a mixing system with an in-line viscometer used in conjunction with a programmable control system for the purposes of monitoring and controlling the production processes involved in a batter mixing system.